Order! Order, please!
The MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES: Dogs never bark at a stationary vehicle or car. When the car moves, the dogs will start barking. The faster the car moves, the louder the dogs bark. Hon members, you have heard the loud barking and howling noises this afternoon. The only problem is that the car has long since left them behind!
The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa guarantees all citizens of our country the right to sufficient food and water. Since the adoption of the Constitution, our country has implemented a number of programmes aimed at achieving food security for all. For various reasons, however, we still cannot claim to have achieved our goal, as a large number of households have an inadequate food supply.
Ladies and gentlemen, you may ask yourselves why a debate on food production is necessary. That is because you cannot address food security without taking aim at food production, particularly in a country like ours, where the triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment confronts us every day.
While food prices have increased generally, it remains an anomaly that the basket of basic foodstuffs in rural areas is more expensive than in urban areas. This is despite the fact that the burden of joblessness, inequality and poverty is even more pronounced in rural areas.
South Africa as a country is food secure. In fact, we are a net exporter of primary agricultural foods! This situation is good, but it must also be protected and we cannot be complacent. Even though South Africa has food security as a country, we do not have household food security. Those who do not have household food security are predominantly African - black African women, and rural women in particular.
Climate change and the loss of agricultural land to other priorities always make us vulnerable to sudden changes in food prices. We are also vulnerable to international fluctuations, as the drought in the United States has shown us. We are okay for now, but we must be vigilant about our national food security, especially during this time of high food prices, food price volatility and inflation.
Our country is a net importer only of processed goods. Please, we are not overall a net importer of food. We export primary agricultural goods and we import processed goods.
Our real problem is what we call making every individual and every household food secure. Up to 10 million South Africans are vulnerable to food insecurity. This is where many of our systems have gone wrong. We are overdependent on markets and retailers for our food needs and when these fail us, we see food insecurity. When food is dumped by retailers or farmers, we depend on organisations like FoodBank to assist us to distribute waste food and food donations to the poorest of the poor.
About the stuck record of the R800 million project, there is no business plan because there is no R800 million allocation! The stuck record of the hon member Steyn will never stop because she has nothing else to say. It is really unbecoming and very sad that this hon member underestimates her own intelligence.
With regard to attendance at meetings, there is no way that a national Minister can attend each and every portfolio committee meeting every week. A Minister is not a member of the portfolio committee. So, there is an unbelievable perception that a Minister, or I in this case, must be at a portfolio committee meeting every week. That is totally absurd. [Interjections.]